Stealing From The Thieves
by heartsways
Summary: Based on a prompt from vargesz, who asked for "5 times Emma and Regina kiss and 5 times they tell themselves not to". There's also a sixth chapter with something else entirely...
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Stealing From The Thieves  
**Author: **heartsways  
**Rating:** NC-17  
**Fandom: **Once Upon A Time  
**Pairing:** Regina/Emma  
**Disclaimer:** All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.  
**Summary: **Based on a prompt from vargesz, who wanted "5 times Emma and Regina kiss and 5 times they promise they won't" with a little bit of something at the end.  
**Author's Note:** You can find me on twitter: heartsways or on tumblr

Chapter 1: Don't Know How You Took It

"Why does this always happen after a fight?" Emma gasps, twisting her fingers into Regina's hair. They stumble backwards, clinging to one another until the hard edge of Regina's desk in the office she's reclaimed with little to no opposition at all brings them to an abrupt halt.

Gulping air that Emma has snatched from her lungs with kisses that still burn hot on her lips, Regina feels her head tilt back. Emma likes to pull on her hair – or so she's learned in these fetid, harried liaisons – and, if she's honest, Regina likes to let her.

"I'm asking myself why this happens at **all**." Regina aims for nonchalance and the sort of dismissal she always used to throw at Emma like so many fireballs. She'd always taken such petty pleasure in seeing the burn of angry shame on Emma's cheeks. But then, she'd always taken pleasure in eliciting _any_ sort of reaction, particularly if it was one that attempted to assuage her own self-righteous pain.

Now, though, her voice comes out in something approaching a whine. Regina isn't sure whether it's Emma's mouth on her throat, lips nipping and tugging at the flesh there, or her own response to the sensation that provides the answer she's known for much longer than she'll ever admit to.

Against the curve of her neck, in the hollow beneath her ear, Emma's tongue licks like a flame and Regina hisses, writhing against the desk. Her fingers curl around its edge and grip tightly as she hears a muffled laugh flooding warm air over her throbbing pulse point.

"You **know** why," Emma murmurs, and her fingers increase their hold on Regina's hair, her thigh moves between Regina's knees.

It always gets to this point, when the only barrier between them is clothes and their strength of will. Regina's no longer sure which of those things she'll discard first. She already feels naked every time Emma looks at her in that way she has, a dark expression of intent on her face. Regina's started to see it more often lately than she did before, or perhaps it's that her unerring ability to blithely ignore the obvious just doesn't do quite what it should. Not anymore.

She can't even remember what they'd been arguing about. Not that it matters. The sniping and one-upmanship has evolved into a voracious sort of foreplay that seems both trivial and irrational. But it hums beneath their skin whenever they're around one another, much like the magic that they've shared.

Regina thinks that the way this feels might just be a fair trade for all the powers that she won't allow herself to use anymore.

Emma's thigh is pressing against the fine lines of her skirt and Regina closes her eyes, allowing the moment to take hold and burst heat and light inside her chest. And then she remembers the crackle and hiss of fire as it razed villages to the ground and cleared a way for her dark destruction.

She pushes Emma away with enough force to bring a disappointed, questioning sound from the blonde's mouth that had, seconds before, been sliding across her jaw and heading for her lips. They stare at one another until Regina pushes at her hair – surely tousled and unkempt by now – and lifts her chin.

"Miss Swan – "

"Oh, here we go," Emma mutters, rolling her eyes and mumbling out of the side of her mouth like she's sharing a joke at Regina's expense.

"Excuse me?" Regina draws herself up to her full height and knows that on her impossibly high heels she's quite the imposing figure.

But Emma Swan, true to form, refuses to be intimidated and instead looks faintly amused. She folds her arms over her chest and rocks back on her heels, shaking her head a little.

"Here's the part where you say this can't happen, where you tell me I'm an interloper into your life and Henry's life and Storybrooke and possibly the entire world and yadda yadda yadda," Emma intones in a flat, bored voice.

"Well, I'm glad this is all so insignificant to you," Regina bristles.

"Not insignificant," Emma corrects her. "But it **does** keep happening so…you know…"

"No, I don't," Regina says bluntly. And she really _doesn't_, because all of this goading and kissing and touching is starting to play havoc with her well-defined sense of propriety. Emma Swan might fly by the seat of her pants and imagine that indiscriminate and highly inappropriate physicality is acceptable, but Regina…

She doesn't finish her thought. She can't. Because when she tries, all she can think about is the way Emma's lips taste and how she can't quite define the sweetness of them that lingers on her own.

"We can't," Regina says a little more weakly than she'd intended, and when Emma's eyebrows quirk upwards, she sighs. "Do this, I mean," she adds.

"It's not like anyone's going to find out," Emma shrugs.

Regina snorts. "Clearly you've never lived in a small town before, Miss Swan. If we continue this ill-advised behavior, then **everyone's** going to find out."

"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure you're not the one who'll come off worse for that," Emma says, so equivocally that Regina feels a smart of offense in her chest and winces. Her reputation is so charred and blackened by now that she's sure people would think Emma had lost her mind to want anything more from Regina than her servitude and surrender. Because saving Storybrooke – saving all of them – counts for very little when Regina is held responsible for orchestrating this in the first place.

Emma frowns, her lips pursing in precisely the same way Henry has of showing his disapproval. Regina tries not to notice but ends up staring at Emma's mouth, which doesn't help matters one bit.

"So…no more kissing, then," Emma says, and it's a blank statement rather than a question. Now she sounds like Henry, too, and Regina can't resist the impatient sigh that grumbles in her throat.

"No more kissing," she repeats firmly. Or as firmly as she can when it's clear that neither of them really want to stop.

But perhaps that's why they have to.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Just Know What You Got

There's a tear in the fabric of time. Or, at least, that's how Gold describes it before waving his cane at the lot of them and limping off down Main Street towards his shop. His reluctance to explain any further is matched only by the fact that he refuses to help and even has the temerity to smile at the stunned group before he deserts them.

Lip curling at the sight of Gold's uneven, feral teeth, Emma's nostrils flare as she watches him walk away and she turns to glower at her parents like it's their fault Storybrooke is coming apart at the seams.

"What," she finally forces out through gritted teeth, "the hell is a tear in the fabric of time supposed to mean?"

Snow and Charming exchange an anxious glance and inch closer to one another. The parenting they've actually managed to do – scant and fraught with regret over the fact that their daughter is a grown woman instead of their baby – hasn't once accounted for this sort of thing. No; when it comes to magic and time and the very atoms that make this world and hold it together, they're clueless.

"It means that the barriers between worlds are breaking down."

The explanation comes, not from the people who want to give Emma all the answers she'll ever need, but the one person who took her away from them in the first place. Snow's jaw hardens at the sound of Regina's voice, but she's wise enough not to act on her instincts. This time, anyway.

"What the…I mean…shit." Emma breathes in through her nose, lets it out over her lips and tries to force the irritation thickening her throat down into her gut. She clenches her hands into fists down by her sides and turns to Regina, who's been little more than a silent onlooker until now.

"So what do we do?" she asks the person who knows more about magic than anyone else – apart from Gold, that is. "To stop it. What do we do?"

Regina's eyebrows rise and she thinks for a second. Not that she has to, but she might at least give the impression of pondering a solution before she tells the Charmings that there isn't one.

"I'm not sure we can do anything," she finally says. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Snow grasp at her husband and lean into him as his arm slides around her. It takes almost superhuman effort not to roll her eyes and Regina gives herself a mental pat on the back for resisting. She focuses instead on Emma, who shakes her head, the lines between her eyes deepening.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ," Emma mutters. "Does **anything** ever happen here that isn't a sign of impending doom?"

It's a rhetorical question, but from the way that Snow's face crumples into a pained expression and Regina's hardens into sharp lines of discontent, Emma knows that they both feel responsible for her anger and the weight that sags at her shoulders. It should be comforting, but it fails to appease the growing frustration at the cards life has dealt her.

But Emma's never been one for fitting in with the pack, and she throws back her shoulders and lets out a grating sigh.

"Go and find Henry," she says to her parents. "Take him to your place, keep him with you."

The tone of her voice brooks no dissent and it's with a hasty bob of her head that Snow tugs on Charming's arm, the two of them scurrying off towards the diner where Henry is being distracted with Granny's latest attempt at a sundae.

"We have to do something," Emma tells Regina. "We have to find a way. I mean, what the hell, right?"

"What the hell indeed," Regina says quietly, although there's something of a smile playing around her lips that Emma can't quite read properly.

"So what caused this?"

Regina knows what caused it; it's what _always_ makes these sorts of things happen. It's the same thing that spits and sparks in the air between them every time they're near one another – and _that's_ something Regina has tried to avoid of late with a renewed sense of determination.

"Magic," she says.

"Right. Of **course**." There's little need for further illumination because Emma's learned all she really needs to know about magic recently. Creating it, feeling it, using it and combining it with Regina's down in the mines below Storybrooke was a hundred lessons in one and even though she's not yet ready to trust the power she has in her, there's no denying that it's a preternatural ability.

"How about," Emma begins cautiously, as she and Regina begin walking towards City Hall, "if we were to try that thing we did in the mines. With magic, you know? Yours and mine?"

"I'm not sure **that's** a good idea," Regina tells her as they turn into an alleyway that serves as a short cut through the row of shops on Main Street. "That's probably what ripped a hole through time in the first place."

"Did the trick though," Emma muses.

"And some magic simply isn't meant to be combined," Regina continues as though Emma hasn't spoken at all, drawing a glare of reprove from the blonde. "Yours is the magic of true love," she adds with a faint sneer to her voice, "and mine is…well. Not."

"So you won't help me then?" Emma is a little incredulous, eyes widening at the obstinacy of the other woman and the way she's decided that any and all interaction between them must be managed with expert efficacy and detachment.

"**I'm **not the Savior," Regina shrugs, but there's something of a jealous gleam to her eyes that Emma can't help but notice in the shadows of the alleyway.

"No, you're a pain in my ass." The words are out before Emma can stop them and there's a hand on her arm, gripping her with clawlike fingers. She balks a little as Regina bears down on her, moving her deeper into the darkness of the alley where the sun simply can't reach.

"Watch your tongue, Miss Swan," Regina hisses, forgetting all her carefully placed warnings and removing the distance between them until Emma is almost against the brick wall behind her and Regina's body is almost touching her.

Emma can't resist a smile because when Regina's like this, she's wildly attractive. When Regina's like this, Emma finds she can't resist the urges that rise in her gut and linger further down, where her thighs meet.

"Or what?" Emma challenges, her voice dropping to a deep tone that slides between them like the hungry caress of a lover. "Gonna bite it off, are you?"

The corner of Regina's mouth lifts in what looks like a smile, but it's little more than a glimmer before she darts forwards and presses her lips against Emma's. Her tongue slips over the plump succulence of Emma's lips and into the warmth of her mouth, where it flicks and slides over Emma's own, rising to meet it. One of them groans – neither is sure who – and the sound vibrates down both of their bodies to thrum insistently between their legs as the kiss becomes more frantic, more greedy and more intense.

With difficulty, Regina wrenches herself away from Emma, who has her eyes closed and chin tilted up, lips swollen and red and parted. For a second, Regina merely stares at the blonde before her mouth turns down in disgust at the simple promises to herself that she can't keep. Taking a step back, there's no mistaking the look of unrestrained want on Emma's face and Regina snarls at it because she's certain, were she to look in a mirror, she'd see the same emotion painted across her own features.

Opening her eyes, Emma blinks like she's waking from a dream and clears her throat, swallowing audibly before she can find her voice.

"No," Regina says abruptly, holding up a finger in the air before Emma's astonished eyes. "No," she repeats, shaking her head.

"I'm not the one who – "

"I said, **no**." For once, Emma is stunned into silence by the tremor she sees in Regina's finger, by the way that there's a steely glint to the other woman's eyes and a harsh rasp to her voice. So she relents, this time. Because if they don't figure out what's wrong in Storybrooke then there may not be many more opportunities for this sort of back and forth; there may not be the time she needs to chip away at Regina and break through that brittle armor she insists on wearing.

And that, Emma thinks, as Regina turns on her heel and stalks away, would be a real shame.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Don't K now How You Got Here

"Oh my **god**," Emma moans, but the last word is protracted and drawn out into something that ends in little more than a high-pitched squeal. It's _so_ not how a Savior should sound, she thinks absently as another wave of feeling crashes over her and leaves her, quite literally, breathless.

So she's gasping and gulping and she can't get enough to fill her lungs and she feels like she's simply going to –

Then she does.

Her heart is still pounding when she opens her eyes a minute later and she squints down the bed, her body lying with limp satisfaction on top of the covers, legs splayed across them with a dark head in between her thighs and her clothes…well, _god knows_ where her clothes are. She only knows that she's not wearing a stitch and probably should be trying to cover herself up.

Emma makes a promise to do just that when she feels like her limbs aren't made of wet noodles and the trembling in her thighs doesn't threaten to turn her legs to jello should she try and stand.

The bed moves beside her and Emma's head lolls to the left to see Regina lie down next to her, still half-dressed, her cheeks flushed and a shimmer of perspiration on her forehead, lips glistening with moisture that – Emma has the decency to blush a little – definitely _isn't_ sweat. Emma's mouth is slack, lips numb and uncooperative. But perhaps that's just as well, as she's not entirely sure she'd be able to stem the torrent of things she's wanted to say to Regina for almost as long as she's felt them. Maybe it's better that she keeps them inside, where they surely belong.

Only, keeping things inside isn't really Emma's forte and when it comes to feelings that are this powerful and this overwhelming, she's really more of an _outy_ than an _inny_.

The thought strikes her as hilarious, and the guffaw that comes from her mouth has Regina turning to her, a bemused and altogether far too judgmental expression crinkling her brow.

"Something funny?" One eyebrow rises above eyes that are already fading to black and Regina's tone is husked in that delicious way she has of making everything sound like a veiled threat.

"Me," Emma manages to say, and laughs again. Because really, the fact that she takes pleasure in Regina's dark side should bother her more than it does. But there's an odd familiarity to it that comforts Emma because when they spar and disagree, it makes her feel safe. And she can't really explain it to herself, let alone even begin to explain it to the woman peering down at her right now.

"**I'm **funny. **This** is funny."

Regina hums under her breath and stares at Emma intently. This isn't really how she pictured magic lessons when the decision to save Storybrooke (again – and _again_ – and really, how many times is this going to be necessary?) was made. Snow had appealed to Regina's better nature, only to have Leroy remark sourly that the Evil Queen didn't have one. And after an argument broke out in the diner, Regina had slipped away, not wanting to be at the center of a tempest that was intent on destroying her old character without the grace of giving her a new one.

Then, Emma had appeared and begged Regina to teach her. But, Regina thinks as her gaze sweeps down the lean lines of Emma's body, she could never have accounted for where they'd end up.

She's lying, of course. Because this has not only been a long time coming, but it's taken yet another near-apocalypse to shove them towards one another and honestly, it's all becoming a little bit tiresome.

"I'm failing to see the humor of the situation," Regina says, and she sees how Emma's eyes darken a little. _Good_, she thinks. After all, misery loves company and Regina will be damned if she's going to be left feeling it alone. Again.

Emma rolls over onto her side and faces Regina. "It's funny because we said we weren't going to do this again," she tells Regina. "Remember?"

"**We**?" Regina's voice rises in surprise. "If I recall correctly, you had a distinctly cavalier attitude towards these sorts of indiscretions, although I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised by **that**," she finishes.

"Indiscretions," Emma says, rolling the word around her mouth and then deciding that the way it feels on her tongue tastes about as bad as the eggs Henry had massacred the other morning. "Look, I know this might not be the most sensible of things but if we're going to be spending time together doing…" her mouth twitches, "…**magic** then maybe we should make some ground rules."

"I thought we had."

"Yeah, but maybe we should make ones that we actually stick to?"

Regina looks unconvinced until Emma leans towards her. They've been in one another's personal space so often and with such antagonistic fire in their eyes that it shouldn't come as a surprise, really. But Regina flinches and jerks back a little, and Emma looks at her with a growing curiosity that finally gives way to comprehension: Regina's _afraid_.

_Oh_, Emma thinks. It's about as coherent as she can get as she understands that the rules they make for themselves and one another are pretty meaningless when it comes to this. It's almost as though there's a sexual imperative that overrides logic and rationality, forcing them together despite what they should or shouldn't indulge in.

"What are you doing?" Regina gasps as Emma's hand curves around her cheek and her vision is assaulted with more green and blonde and sweetness and want than it has any right to be.

Emma's face screws up into a contemplative expression and she opens her mouth to speak, then thinks better of it, clamping her lips shut for a minute. Her hand remains on Regina's face and there's something almost casual about the way Emma's thumb tracks a line across first her lower lip, then her upper one, lingering in the dip of a scar that might never be explained.

Finally, Emma draws in an audible breath and nods to herself, her gaze flicking up to meet Regina's.

"Tootsie Rolls," she finally says. "You're like Tootsie Rolls."

Regina takes a minute to register the words, turns them over in her mind and then frowns because they make absolutely no sense whatsoever. She knows what they are, of course, and has frequently confiscated them from Henry's backpack in the past, but as for how they apply to _her_ or this situation escapes her completely.

"I'm…" she begins, unsure whether to be offended or hungry or both. "I'm like – "

"Yeah," Emma nods and lets out a little, self-conscious laugh and rolls her eyes. "When I was a kid in the home, candy was a rare treat. But I lived with some foster parents for a while and they…they used to give me Tootsie Rolls. I guess I fell in love with them."

Her voice trails away as she smiles fondly before it's replaced by an altogether more prevalent memory: one that traces hurt across her brow and puts a flash of bright pain into her eyes. But Emma swallows over it and remembers to breathe. Just like she's been doing all this time since they sent her back into the system.

"Anyway," she continues, "I guess I was what they called a troubled kid and when I went back into the system I was always getting into scrapes of one kind or another. I mean, I was kinda known for it among the other kids there."

There's a glimmer of something in Regina's gaze that curves the corners of her mouth, but before she can make a sound, Emma puts her thumb against Regina's lips and quietly shushes her.

"One time, I did something to piss them off – the wardens, we used to call them. And they told me that I wasn't allowed any more candy for a month."

Now Regina does speak, but it's in a low, hushed tone that's about as close to affectionate as Emma suspects she's going to get right. "No more Tootsie Rolls, then?"

"Right. So I climbed out a window, took all my savings, such as they were, and went to a local store where I blew the lot on Tootsie Rolls. Sat right outside and ate them all, one after the other. By the time I got back to the children's home I started throwing up and didn't stop for most of the night."

"What a heartwarming story of sickness and overindulgence," Regina says, but she can tell from the smirk on Emma's lips that the blonde understands her. And _that's_ probably more frightening than any physical intimacy they might have fostered.

"What I'm saying, Regina," Emma leans in a little closer and her fingers tighten, nails scraping just past Regina's hairline, sending a prickle of sensation scurrying across her scalp, "is that if I can't do this anymore – if **we** can't do this anymore, then I want to do it as much as I can for the last time, okay?"

Denial had been perverted into something that was a wicked necessity in Regina's life thus far. The things she couldn't have and the things she craved becoming one and the same. So she learned to take whatever she could, whenever she could from whomever she so desired.

But this, she thinks, is made of true desire. Uncontained. Uncontrollable. It's why she has to stop; why she needs to stop. Why she **will** stop.

Tomorrow.

As she bends towards Emma, acquiescence the greater part of valor, Regina hears the thankful sigh that comes from the blonde and wonders if tonight will be enough. She knows that it has to be. It must.

"So," she murmurs as Emma's mouth finds her own. "Tootsie Rolls, hm?"

"Mmhmm," Emma's voice vibrates against her lips and Regina shifts on the bed, a hand rising up to rest gently on the curve of the blonde's hip. "Tootsie Rolls."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Just Know You Want Out

Henry knows there's something going on but he can't quite grasp the words to describe it properly. Things have been weird lately, but he supposes that's what happens when there's a tear in time that his mothers have created with the magic they've used. It's what happens when there's magic in a world where it shouldn't really exist at all. He has a sneaking suspicion that it's not the _only_ thing that seems out of place in Storybrooke.

He watches his moms as they pore over a book that Regina has – a little shamefully – brought out from a locked cupboard in their house. It's full of signs and symbols that Henry doesn't understand and he feels a strange sense of foreboding as Emma flicks through the pages and huffs with blatant incomprehension.

But Henry doesn't think it's _just_ the magic that's a problem. His moms are acting strangely around one another and it's confusing because after they saved Storybrooke, down in the mines, he'd thought they were okay now. Not friends, exactly, but not enemies, either. And he loves both of them for trying so hard to work together because it feels like they're family. A _proper_ family.

Emma lets out an unsatisfied growl and bangs her hands down on the kitchen table, leaning back in her chair. Beside her, Regina rolls her eyes and her lips form a hard line that Henry recognizes all too well. Her patience is being sorely tested and he wonders how long it will be before she snaps. From his vantage point by the doorway, he shifts a little because if his mom is going to snap and unleash almighty hell on Emma, he's not sure he wants to be around to see it.

"None of this makes any sense," Emma says shortly.

"It's the language of magic, dear," Regina answers. "It's not **supposed** to make sense to those who aren't versed in it."

"**Versed**?" Emma lets out an abrupt laugh and jerks away from Regina, looking at the other woman like she's some sort of antiquity in Gold's shop. "Seriously?"

Regina blinks at her impassively and that only seems to irritate Emma more. She shakes her head and puffs out her cheeks.

"Sometimes you talk like you just popped up from medieval times or something," she mutters.

Regina gives a thin smile. "And sometimes **you** talk like you want our son to grow up speaking like a sailor," she tells Emma, with a sideways glance at Henry.

Emma looks at him and Henry shrugs a little. He knows the difference between cursing and not, but he can understand the temptation to swear sometimes. Besides, he can also understand Emma's frustration at this whole magic thing; he's seen it line her face when she talks about it and especially when she's around Regina. He thinks maybe Emma feels a bit insecure, or something else. Something he hasn't quite figured out yet. Whatever it is, he knows that his moms will never exist peaceably with one another because that's just not their way.

There's a little part of him that kind of likes it, so he grins widely at both of them as they look across the kitchen towards him.

"Don't worry, mom," he directs towards Regina, and there's some comfort in the way her expression softens as he says her name with real affection now, "I know which words to use and when."

There's a smugness to the smile on Regina's face as she glances at Emma. "That's because you were raised properly," she says in a tone that carries all the censure it needs to bring a scowl to Emma's lips.

"Yeah, you're a real prince, kid," she says to Henry, but there's a loving twist to her mouth and his grin only increases in brightness as she breathes laughing over the words.

"Technically, I am," he tells her. "And you're a princess." He nods gravely as Emma and Regina share an astonished look before they both laugh dismissively, in their own way. But they're embarrassed, too, because reminders of Fairy Tale Land never really sit well with either of them. And as much as Henry knows that there aren't any secrets about their identities – not any more – he still feels the discomfort of acceptance that settles over them as they both look down at the book on the table.

"Well, your Highnesses," Regina finally says sardonically, and Henry knows that it's her way of showing that she's changed, that she's submitted to who they are and what they might have been once upon a time, "we're not going to be **anything** unless we solve this problem we created."

"Easier said than done," Emma tells her dolefully. "If I can't understand this book of magic stuff, then how the hell am I going to be any help?"

Regina taps her fingertip onto the open page in front of them. "This book tells us the **what**," she says slowly, "but the **how** isn't beyond your capabilities, Emma. Magic is more than just words. It's feeling. Emotion. And I know that even someone like you has plenty of **that**."

The tiny barb brings a frown to Emma's forehead, but the words themselves appear gratifying in some way and Henry can see how they look at each other in tacit understanding. It makes something inside his chest clench a little and he can't help wondering if that thing he can't quite define is contained in the way that their eyes meet, the way that Emma smiles a little and looks like Regina's just paid her a compliment.

They bend over the book once more, their heads moving closer together and as Regina points out a line in the text on the page, Emma cranes forwards to inspect it. Her shoulder bumps up against Regina's, her arm brushing over the other woman's. They look at one another again, their faces much closer than either of them had anticipated and Henry feels like an intruder on something private. Staring at Regina, Emma's mouth opens and she jerks back in her chair as though she's been burned, a muttered apology coming from her lips.

By the time there's space between them, Henry's already wondering what just happened. Because he's not the only one who's noticed that his moms like to get up in one another's faces – it's how they communicate best, he thinks. But this is…_weird_. Like they want to be that way but when they are, it makes both of them feel ill at ease.

It makes him feel perplexed and a little out of place so he tells them he's going to find one of his comic books. That, at least, is a fantasy world in which he fully understands the rules that govern it and it never lets him down. There's a part of him that feels like maybe he needs that today, because what's happening in the kitchen is confusingly different from how he saw all of this playing out over a year ago. He's not sorry his mom is good now, and he's not sorry that he really, truly loves her and knows that she loves him. But Emma was always an unknown quantity and still is, really. He expected her to be his avenging White Knight but from what he's just seen, she's settling into this shared parenthood thing a lot more quickly than he ever expected.

After ten minutes of trying to read the continuing adventures of Wolverine – and Henry can't help pondering the logistics of having knives that spout from one's knuckles and how awkward that would be at family dinners if someone made him angry – he's read the same page three times without taking in any of the story painted across it. Sighing, he concludes that his interest lies elsewhere, in the mystical magic that Regina knows so much about and that Emma is ignorant to.

It's only as he retraces his steps back towards the kitchen that he hears the hum of voices, low and conspiratorial with a note of urgency in every hissed syllable. Pausing just outside the doorway, he flattens himself against the wall so he remains unseen and cranes his neck to one side, listening intently.

"That's not helpful," he hears Emma say.

"Neither is your hand on my leg," Regina responds.

A frown slides across Henry's features because…_no_. No _way_.

"My hand isn't **on** your leg, your Majesty," Emma laughs. "It's on **my** leg. **Your** leg is just…adjacent."

Henry swallows hard. It sounds like his moms are flirting. He might not be completely cognizant of the way adults relate to one another but he's seen enough romantic comedies – Regina still thinks he doesn't know that she watches them on her own sometimes and that he's plundered her stash of view-on-demand TV – to know how this conversation goes. Besides, the light laugh he hears from Regina pretty much obliterates any fears he might have that they're arguing again.

"Emma," Regina's voice is low, a playful warning.

"Hey – you're the one who insisted on us snuggling up over a book of magic," Emma murmurs.

"Except **I** know how to keep my hands to myself, and **you** clearly don't."

"Such a liar," Emma sighs, and Henry can literally hear the way she's probably rolling her eyes. "You're not keeping your hands to yourself right now, lady."

There's a low chuckle that prickles alarm across Henry's scalp, then a quiet that's filled with sounds he can only describe as…_ew_. Those romantic comedies flutter through his head as he comes to the conclusion that what's happening at the kitchen table right now is horribly intimate and involves the sort of kissing that people indulge in when they're falling in love.

The White Knight and the Evil Queen. In all the comic books he's read, the villains don't usually make out after battling their way to victory and defeat. Although, he muses at the back of his mind, it probably would have saved Magneto and Professor X a whole lot of trouble if they _had_.

"Stop that," Henry hears Regina say softly, in the sort of tone he rarely associates with the way she talks to Emma.

"You started it!" Emma snorts gently.

"What if Henry were to see us? We **promised**, Emma." There's a strained note to Regina's voice that deepens the frown burgeoning on Henry's forehead and he wonders if things have changed to a much greater extent than he's witnessed already. Because the Evil Queen would never fall in love with the person sent to destroy her. _Would_ she?

"Okay, okay," Emma sighs deeply, and Henry hears the scrape of a chair over the tiles of the kitchen floor as silence resumes in the room once more.

By the time he appears in the doorway, Emma is a respectful distance from his mother, watching intently as Regina rifles through pages in her book of magic.

"Hey kid," Emma looks up and grins at him as he wanders towards them, his comic book clutched in one hand. "How d'you make out?"

She nods at the comic and Henry looks down at it, a sly smile crossing over his mouth as he lifts his head and meets her gaze head on.

"Okay, I guess," he shrugs. "What about you two – how did you make out?"


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Caught In The Headlights

Emma feels stupid. No, it's actually worse than that. She feels _inadequate_. And stupid. She's been listening to Regina talk about their plan to close the barriers between worlds for over twenty minutes and honestly, she hasn't really understood a lot of it. Not that she'd ever admit to that, of course.

She can tell by the way Regina's voice is slowing down in pace that she doesn't need to. And it kind of pisses her off, if she's honest, that the other woman knows her well enough to see past the nods that Emma uses to punctuate Regina's explanation as though she's keeping up perfectly well _thank you very much_. But feeling disadvantaged has been a part of her life for too long and even though she's _special_ now, imbued with magic beyond her ken and what she suspects is a developing hero-complex, Emma knows that Regina has the upper hand when it comes to this sort of thing.

Regina stops talking and frowns at Emma like she's going to admonish her, but appears to change her mind and instead rises from the sofa in the study where a fire is crackling merrily in the grate and Emma's starting to feel her eyes become heavy in the warmth of the room, Regina's sonorous voice lulling her more than is advisable. It's funny, she thinks, as she watches Regina move across the room towards the decanter of whiskey that's always two-thirds full, how someone can become accustomed to the thing they used to hate. Even feel a strange affection for it, in the end.

When they'd first met, Emma had been intimidated by the poise and elegance of the other woman; the way she chose her words so carefully and with such specific intention to make Emma feel small and uneducated had burned in her belly almost as much as that first drink Regina offered her. But now, watching Regina make quick work of pouring them both a tumbler of alcohol, hearing the faint chink of ice in the glass and noting how easily she navigates her way back across the room in her impeccably stylish outfit, Emma isn't jealous of Regina at all.

_No_, she thinks with an inward sigh, the way she feels about the other woman is about as far from jealousy as it can get. And even if she isn't sure precisely what it is, or if she's unwilling to give a label to it – because even if the word is in her head she's damn sure not going to _say_ it or even _think_ it – Emma's mouth twists a little as her gaze rakes up and down Regina's form.

Taking the glass Regina holds out to her, Emma thinks she can spy acknowledgement on the other woman's lips: a smug satisfaction that indicates she knows how attractive she is. And maybe she's not the Evil Queen anymore, but Emma can't help wondering if there's still a wicked streak in Regina because the dress she's wearing clings appealingly to her curves and her arms are bare and her skin looks like it's longing for Emma's touch and…

_Oh god. _

Emma swigs rather more deeply at the whiskey than she intended and swallows it with a gulp under Regina's dark eyes. She always was craptastically unable to resist temptation, and now it's sitting beside her on the couch, Emma has to conclude that for all the promises and rules they made, they've amounted to a whole heap of nothing in light of the way that Regina's staring at her.

"Not so sure this is a good idea," Emma says, holding up her glass.

Regina blinks innocently – too innocently – and glances down at her own tumbler, tilting the glass so that the ice inside it slides from one side to the other.

"It's a nightcap," she says bluntly, "not an invitation."

"After listening to you drone on about magic this and magic that, I'm not gonna need any help sleeping." The corners of Emma's mouth turn down as she feels all her failings rush over her at once.

"Well if you were concentrating on what I was saying rather than what I'm wearing…" Regina says quietly, looking down into her glass and swirling the liquid inside it around with a practiced manner.

"Look, I know you're hardly the jeans and t-shirt sort of girl, but honestly, we're trying to…you know…not do that **thing** we were doing. And the way you look is…"

Emma sighs and purses her lips as Regina looks her with a heavy-lidded gaze, all mystery and provocation.

"It's not helping," she finishes in a woeful tone, lifting her glass and swallowing another huge mouthful of whiskey. Because it's not really the dress at all and she knows that. Regina could be wearing a sack and Emma would still want her. It's horribly depressing to know that, Emma thinks to herself, silently damning Regina and herself in one fell swoop.

"So now I have to dress like – well, like **you** in order to keep you at bay?" Regina muses, faintly amused. "Or perhaps I should dress more like your mother; would that help?"

The malicious gleam in her eyes makes Emma frown disapprovingly, although she can't help wondering what Regina would look like in the pink sweater that Mary Margaret seems to favor above all others. The second the image enters her head, Emma recoils from it and leans forwards, putting her half-empty glass onto the low table in front of them.

"All insults against my mother aside," Emma intones in reprove, settling herself back against the couch, "don't try to tell me I don't look hot in these jeans, because I know I do."

Regina laughs now, but it's far too high-pitched and false to be anything other than a defense mechanism, and she places her glass quite deliberately onto the table alongside Emma's, taking her time before she sits back and looks into a steady green gaze.

"They're very tight," she says, and looks at them so intently that Emma feels her heart quicken: that hungry gaze means her bravado has had precisely the reaction she wanted, promises or no promises.

"They're also very cheap," Regina adds, and Emma deflates a little. _Or maybe not_, she thinks.

"Didn't hear you complaining when you were ripping them off me last week," Emma huffs.

It's really the worst thing she could have said and the moment the words are out of her mouth, she wishes she could take them back. Because when it comes to sticking to the rules and the rights and wrongs of what they've done, memories of that night linger like the taste of alcohol: hot and intoxicating.

"An aberration," Regina explains, but her voice is thick with the recollection of her hands on Emma's flesh, of her lips tracing wet lines over a taut stomach and her fingers curling around those damned jeans and cursing how difficult they were to remove.

Emma grunts in amusement then leans towards Regina a little, interest piquing her gaze. "I have to ask," she says, the corner of her mouth quirking up into a grin, "how the **hell** did you get so good at…at **that**?"

Her inference is clear and Regina's eyes widen as though she's alarmed by mere virtue of the fact that she's done _that_ to _anyone_, never mind the eponymous Savior of all the worlds she's ever known. But sense memory is a powerful thing, and even as she's summoning up recriminations for raising such an indelicate subject, she remembers the hot, slickness on her tongue and how Emma's hips rose and fell and jerked forwards under her mouth.

She draws in a little breath, no more than a gasp of comprehension as she stares at Emma. Because more than anything, Regina wants to do it again. And _again_. Over and over until she has the Savior screaming for her.

"We promised," Emma says in little more than a whisper.

"We did," Regina replies blankly before she blinks and shakes her head. "Yes, that's right. We did."

The moment hangs between them, stretching beyond into what might be should they have the strength to resist everything save one another. A log on the fire splits, letting out a sound that cracks the tension and makes them both jump.

Emma laughs self-consciously, relieved. "That was close. I almost – "

She's cut off by the hands that slide into her hair and the body that covers her own, pinning her back against the couch. Regina's mouth is on hers, lips spicy with the tang of alcohol, tongue thrusting inside and sliding over her own. Emma's arms curl around the other woman's waist, pulling her close and she hears a moan of such glorious submission that she's pretty sure she could go the rest of her life listening to that one sound from Regina's throat and nothing else.

Panting, Regina's lips track an unsteady, uneven, hasty line along Emma's jaw until they rest in the hollow beneath her ear. Then teeth close around her earlobe and tug on it, warm breath tickling at her skin and making her shiver.

"What about…what we said…" Emma's barely coherent and knows that this isn't going anywhere except upstairs even as she tries to remind herself – remind them _both_ – of the things they'd sworn to one another and themselves.

Regina lifts her head and gazes down at Emma. Her cheeks have a pink flush, her eyes are uncommonly bright and her lips are swollen and kiss-bruised. _Yep_, Emma thinks definitively, there's not going to be any stopping or promises kept tonight.

"I won't tell if you don't," Regina husks out, her fingers still tangled in locks of blonde hair. She shifts slightly and insinuates herself between Emma's legs, pushing down slightly as they both let out a ragged sigh at the contact.

"Ohhhh," Emma's voice is already rasping towards a deeper, more desirous tone and her hands slide down Regina's body to curl under the hem of the dress that the other woman is wearing. "You're still kinda evil, aren't you?"

Regina laughs and her mouth returns to Emma's ear, lips pressed against it as she whispers, "Not evil. This is just a different kind of good, Savior."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: They Don't Know What You're Doing

Emma's staggering around, clapping her hands to her ears in the hopes that it might help the overwhelming buzzing noise that's throwing her off-balance and making her feel slightly queasy. They had to come back down to the old mines – and Emma's pretty sure that if she never sees the inside of this place again for the rest of her life it'll be too soon – because that was where this all started in the first place. Where, Regina told them, the tear in time's fabric was at its widest and most dangerous.

She'd told them all that for a reason and followed it up by insisting that Snow and Charming keep Henry as far away as possible.

Of course, they hadn't. They'd stubbornly refused to leave Emma and Regina in the mines in case something untoward happened and now they're rushing towards Emma, arms outstretched with a look of anxious compassion on their faces.

Emma might be a little off-kilter, but she's still able to twist away from their embrace, backing off until Snow clutches at Charming and he puts his arm around her shoulders, drawing her against him. This whole "having parents" thing is as foreign to her as the remnants of magic humming through her body and vibrating sound into her brain. She doesn't even know if she and Regina managed to do what they intended; Regina had said it would be a longshot, at best.

But then, Emma reminds herself, Regina never was one for looking on the bright side. Particularly when it came to magic. For someone who used to get whatever she wanted with her powers, when they'd come down here, Emma remembers seeing real fear on the other woman's face. Just like the last time they'd been in this tunnel.

She looks around wildly because if she can see Regina's face now, she'll know instantly whether they've succeeded or not.

It's only when she hears Henry shrieking through the whooshing in her ears that she turns to see him crouching over Regina's inert body, lying at the side of the tunnel in a crumpled heap.

As she trips, stumbles and lurches towards them, Emma tries to remember how to breathe and finds even that simple function near impossible. By the time she reaches them, her lungs are starting to ache and so is her chest because Regina's not moving and her eyes are closed.

Dropping down beside Henry, Emma puts her hand on his shoulder and he turns to her, cheeks tear-streaked and lower lip wobbling as he tries to speak.

"She's – "he gulps, "- not moving and – "another gulp, " – she won't wake up!"

"Regina." Emma puts her hand onto the other woman's shoulder and shakes her, as though that can actually help. It doesn't. _Shit._

"Emma, honey?"

Snow and Charming loom up behind her and there's a hand on her hair, soothing and stroking but it doesn't give her comfort. Emma remembers the things that do, the things that she's grown to rely on and that offer her the sort of succor that nothing else – _nobody_ else – can. That fact alone is enough for panic to send adrenaline racing through her veins and she reaches out, shoves at Regina and says her name again, this time in a strangled shout that echoes around them in the tunnel.

"Is she breathing?" Charming bends beside her, squinting down at Regina's chest and letting out a sigh of relief when he sees her chest moving up and down very slowly.

"Mom, **do** something!" Henry urges, pressing at Emma with a shaking hand.

"Henry, I don't – I don't know what to do," Emma forces out over the swelling of her throat. She can't help but remember what Regina said to her the last time they were down here – how controlling such powerful magic, how channeling it and using it would have killed Regina. She recalls how Regina was ready to give everything she had.

Ready to die.

_Oh…no_, she thinks. _No. Absolutely not_.

"You stupid, stubborn, pigheaded, **idiot**!" Emma hisses, her fingers closing around the lapels of Regina's coat and tugging on it so hard that the woman's body moves on the shale beneath it.

"I don't know if that's going to help," Charming mutters above her head.

Henry's staring at Emma with wide, terrified eyes. He can see that she's angry, but he can also see something else as well. And suddenly it makes sense. _All_ of it – the whispering, the kissing, the way that they argue all the time. It just all falls into place. And sure, it might not be the sort of story he's read in his book of fairytales but even he has to admit that there's a sense of ironic poetry to it. And it kinda works.

Or, he looks down at the seemingly lifeless body of his mother, it would if she'd only wake up.

"I swear, Regina," Emma hisses, "one of these days I'm going to kill you before you can kill yourself."

"Mom!" Henry gasps, putting his hand onto Emma's arm as she pulls at Regina's coat once more.

When she looks at him, her eyes are brimming with tears and he knows, without any doubt whatsoever, that sometimes Saviors fall in love with Evil Queens. Because with magic, anything is possible.

"Is she – is she in a coma?" Snow asks, peering down at Regina. "Maybe we should take her to the hospital."

"Or maybe we should just leave her here until she decides to stop throwing herself under the fucking bus without telling anyone," Emma snaps, ignoring the sounds of general dismay from above her head and the way that Henry lets out a tiny noise of anguish and sniffs loudly.

"I don't think that'll help either," Charming ventures kindly, but takes a tiny step back as Emma turns on him, eyes burning with a fire that he recognizes all too well. Considering they've spent all but a few scant minutes of their lives apart, Emma's more like her mother than even he gave her credit for. So when she bends over Regina once more, Charming glances at his wife and she purses her lips and inclines her head.

It was probably inevitable, he thinks to himself. Improbably so, but inevitable in the greater scheme of things. He's a man of faith, of the overwhelming and unutterably powerful strength of love. And he'll be damned if that isn't what he's seeing right now. Rumors have flown around town about Emma and Regina for weeks now, but Charming didn't put much store in them until he can see a connection between his daughter and the woman who cursed them all that goes beyond mere magic.

_Not the most romantic of pairings_, he thinks grimly. But maybe a logical one, given everything that's happened over the last year and a half.

"Now you listen to me," Emma says in a low voice, putting her hand behind Regina's head and lifting the other woman so that she's half lying across her knees, "I'm getting tired of this shit. You **can't** keep doing this, Regina. Not to Henry and not to…"

Her voice breaks and she grinds her teeth together because all she knows is how to antagonize Regina into action. It's all she's _ever_ really known how to do with any efficacy when it comes to the other woman. But that simply doesn't work if they're not both in it; there's no back and forth, no attack and defense if Regina's just given up.

That, more than anything else, is what brings a sob from Emma's mouth and she curses the day she ever met Regina Mills. But it's the days that she might have to spend without her that sit heavily in her chest, because there's something to be said for having an opponent whose will is as strong as hers and who matches her evenly in every inch of the arena.

"Wake up," Emma says in an almost conspiratorial tone. "Dammit, Regina, wake the fuck up and let's argue this out like we usually do."

There's a scrambling beside her as Henry gets to his feet and presses himself against the wall of the tunnel. He scrubs at his cheeks with a dirty hand before taking a breath and trying to gather the wherewithal to speak.

"Kiss her," he says.

Three pairs of eyes turn upon him, astonished and horrified and alarmed that he would even suggest such a thing in the here and now.

"I mean it," he says to Emma, who blinks up at him. "You've got magic and – and you two did magic together and saved us all again and…"

He's running out of steam now, the hard and fast beliefs he's clung to in the past beginning to fray around the edges. True love, he knows, isn't what his mothers share. At least, not in the same way that Snow White and Prince Charming do. Not in the way that the fairytales like to tell it. But maybe…just _maybe_ they share something that's more enduring and more powerful: him. And if Regina's going to come back to this world for anyone, then it's going to be for the family that they've only just started being, surely.

"You want me to – " Emma begins, swallowing hard and glancing down at Regina's lips, slightly parted.

Snow gives a high-pitched, strained laugh and shrugs. "Oh for God's sake, Emma, what harm can it possibly do?"

"Harm?" Emma repeats, her gaze flickering from mother to father as they stand over her and look for all the world like they know what Snow's talking about. And perhaps they do. In _their_ world. "But she's not under a curse…is she? I mean, isn't a kiss of true love only for…"

She sighs and shakes her head. "It's not true love."

"Well," Charming shrugs and folds his arms over his chest, "maybe not **yet**."

He exchanges a glance with Snow that lifts his eyebrows and he sighs a little before pursing his lips and staring back at Emma. She feels a little like she's been caught making out with her boyfriend after a date and fervently wishes for the ground to open up and swallow her. This might be the one and only time she's ever been glad that she didn't grow up with real parents.

"Kiss her," Henry urges again. "You've done it before."

Emma is slack-jawed and does little else but stare back at him as he nods in that same irritating way as his grandfather.

"Emma, honey," Snow says in a low tone. "I know you two think you've been keeping it a secret, but there really aren't any secrets in Storybrooke. Although I have to say that she's not my first choice for you. Gods, she's not even my second or third but – "

"Snow," Charming says, and she clamps her lips shut and bobs her head up and down, wrapping her arms around her body.

"Just try it," Henry says, swiping the back of his hand across his cheeks and leaving a smear of dirt on his pale skin. "It might work."

His voice is so imploring and Emma is so desperate that, for a second, she actually believes that it _could_ work. That she can revive Regina with the simplicity of a kiss: the most ridiculously fabricated notion in all the world that has sustained and kept fairytales alive for hundreds – maybe thousands – of years. And in the second that she puts her faith into the idea, she bends and presses her lips against Regina's.

The mouth against her own is cold, unmoving and lacking in the sort of passion that it's held before under Emma's caress. And it's a different kind of kiss they're sharing now, anyway. Before, it had been clandestine, something to be hidden beneath the covers of their trepidation and shadowed by the uncertainty of what it might all mean.

But this kiss…_this_ kiss is full of all the desperation Emma feels and the light that she and Regina created with their magic. It's a last ditch attempt to take away the darkness that's swirling in one mind and replace it with a fevered great white hope that exists in another. And Emma can't help it; she lifts a hand and cups Regina's face as the kiss deepens because fairytales might be lot of hokum, but in Storybrooke, they're about as real as they're going to be in this world.

It's only when a hand shoves firmly at her shoulder that Emma breaks the kiss, pushed back by fingers that have touched her so many times that to feel them again now almost makes her want to crow in delight.

"Miss Swan!" Regina's voice rings out clearly in the echoing tunnel and she's eyeing Emma with something like distaste as she struggles up into a sitting position, leaning against the wall of the tunnel. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Losing her balance, Emma lands on her behind with a thud and a grunt. Shoving at her hair, she scowls at Regina, all jubilation most definitely gone.

"Uh, saving you?" she barks. "Bringing you back to life. You're welcome, by the way."

"Hardly," Regina snorts, "as I wasn't dead. Even someone with your limited knowledge of medicine should have been able to tell that."

"**I** thought you were dead. I thought you were gone. Away, I mean. From me."

Regina's expression fades into one of sorrowful repentance as Henry throws himself into her arms and nestles against her on the floor of the tunnel. Her arms slide around him and she cradles his head in her hand as he starts to cry again.

"I'm here, sweetheart," she murmurs. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I thought you were – " his voice hitches over the words, " – you weren't moving and…the magic and…I told Emma to kiss you because she's the Savior and you two are, you know, my **moms**."

He says it like it's an explanation for everything. Regina looks over the top of his head towards Emma, who gives her a wan smile, and she returns it with a sense of encroaching wonder. Because perhaps it is. The only explanation that matters, anyway.

Snow watches the silent exchange with something like resignation. And it's only when Regina looks up at her that she sighs and shakes her head a little.

"You seem rather determined to steal my daughter any way you can," she says bluntly.

"May I remind you," Regina says in a voice that's a little harder, a little more brittle than before, "that **she** kissed **me**."

"No," Snow says with a tilt of her head, "I'd really rather you didn't."

"O-kay," Emma draws the word out and gets to her feet, brushing at her jeans more vigorously than she really needs to. "Can we stop talking about all the – uh – kissing and just go home?"

Henry gets up and reaches out, curling his arms around her waist and hugging her with the sort of enthusiasm that has typified his faith in the things Emma didn't even know existed until she'd come to Storybrooke. As he lets her go, he beams up at her and Emma breathes a sigh of relief because there's nothing but joy in his eyes and that, she thinks, is probably what's going to keep this dysfunctional family on track when it comes down to it.

She bends, extending a hand to Regina, who takes it and allows herself to be pulled unceremoniously to her feet. The small group starts to make its way back towards the mouth of the tunnel and, Emma notices with a flush of pleasure, Regina doesn't let go of her hand. Not once.

"So much for promises," Regina says quietly as they follow Snow, Charming and Henry back along the tunnel.

"Yeah," Emma grins. "But you know what? Some of them are worth breaking. Kind of like curses."

"You have a very smart mouth, Miss Swan," Regina murmurs, but there's something like affection in her voice and Emma's grin only widens.

"You know it," she leans in and whispers to Regina. "And by the way? The whole Miss Swan thing? **Hot**. How about you do it again when we get home and we can break a few more promises?"

Regina clucks in disapproval, one eyebrow rising as she looks sideways at Emma. "Is this how you intend on celebrating all our magical victories? I'd say you have a lot to learn about controlling those powers of yours."

"Yeah, but you're gonna teach me, right?" Emma squeezes Regina's hand and is oddly proud of the smile that it brings to the other woman's lips.

"That might take a considerable amount of time, given your propensity towards impulsive, rash and wholly unrestrained outbursts," Regina hums.

Ahead of them, the trio of Snow, Charming and Henry take a bend in the tunnel and disappear from view. Emma tugs on Regina's hand, slowing them down enough so that she can press the other woman against the wall of the tunnel and kiss her again with enough force it makes Regina moan into her mouth, and makes Emma's stomach dip and turn.

"You mean like that?" she says against Regina's lips.

"I…yes," Regina answers, a little lightheaded and a lot breathless. "Something like that."

"Okay," Emma shrugs and steps back as they begin following the path that the others took, their footsteps loud in the cavernous mine. "So…how long? How long will it take to teach me?"

Regina laughs softly and her fingers intertwine with Emma's. "How long do you have?"

"I'm not going anywhere," Emma says blithely, but she can't help looking at Regina with intent as they wander along together.

"Is this another one of your promises?" Regina enquires, and her voice betrays her as it shakes a little, making her rue the day she ever met Emma Swan.

"It is," Emma nods. "But this one, I'm going to keep."


End file.
